PECKHAM, Reynold, of Yaldham in Wrotham, Kent.

The Peckhams had been established in Kent at Wrotham and nearby Hadlow since the late twelfth century. By Henry IV’s reign they were among the most substantial landowners in the county, a position they owed principally to our MP’s grandfather James Peckham† (d.1401) and his second marriage to the wealthy widow and heiress, Laura Morant. The Commons 1386-1421, iv. 37-39. Reynold’s father and namesake married Alice Uvedale, the widow of William Wykeham, a great-nephew of William, bishop of Winchester (d.1404), and when both parents died young in 1407 (when Reynold was still a child), his care and that of his father’s estate was entrusted to Alice’s brother the prominent Hampshire esquire John Uvedale. His inheritance was valued at more than £56 p.a. in 1412 when in his uncle’s keeping, Lambeth Palace Lib., Reg. Arundel, ff. 250-1; Reg. Chichele, i. 200; Feudal Aids, vi. 477. and to this he himself added in the early part of his career lands and fees worth another £14 a year, bringing his income up to £70 p.a. according to the assessments made for the subsidy granted in the Parliament of which he was a Member. E159/212, recorda Hil. rot. 14 (iv)d.

Reynold came of age before August 1427 when he attested the parliamentary election at Rochester. C219/14/1. In Easter term the following year he brought a successful action in the court of common pleas against John Carter of Seal, John Kyng of Wrotham and Simon Wodeward of Chevening to recover property in Chevening, Otford and Shoreham which had formed a parcel of the Morant estate. This was probably a collusive action to confirm Peckham’s title to his paternal grandmother’s inheritance. CP40/670, rot. 120. Peckham may have been educated at Winchester like his Uvedale cousins, and probably also received some legal training. Doubtless he benefited from the guidance of his uncle John Uvedale, one of the most experienced administrators and royal servants in the south of England, for despite his youth he was soon employed in the affairs of his fellow gentry. In June 1429 he was named as one of the executors of William Basset of Guildford, and in the following year he fulfilled a similar function on behalf of the Sussex heiress Amice Halle of Ore. Perhaps he was a kinsman of Amice for he went on to serve her son William Halle* (d.1449) as both executor and feoffee. Reg. Chichele, ii. 432-3; PCC 13 Rous (PROB11/1, f. 103). Peckham’s abilities, as well as his status as a major Kentish landowner, were recognized by the Crown in November 1432 when he was appointed to the commission of the peace in the county. Although never a member of the quorum, he regularly attended sessions of the peace throughout his time on the bench. In 1434 he was among those men in Kent required to take the oath not to maintain criminals. E101/567/3; CPR, 1429-36, p. 388.

At Rochester in September 1435 Peckham was elected along with Edward Guildford* as a knight of the shire for Kent in the Parliament called to address the threat to English rule in Normandy following the death of the duke of Bedford and the defection of Duke Philip of Burgundy to the side of the French. A Burgundian assault upon Calais was expected imminently and Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, agreed terms to serve as its new captain early in the Parliament’s proceedings. It is tempting to see Peckham’s election as evidence of Duke Humphrey’s influence on the parliamentary representation of Kent, where Gloucester, one of the principal landowners in the county, held office as warden of the Cinque Ports. Indeed, the election was attested by many members of the duke’s affinity. C219/14/5. Even so, there is no evidence to link Peckham directly with Gloucester at this date, although before too long he had been enfeoffed of estates in Surrey and Sussex belonging to the family of the duke’s wife, that of Cobham of Sterborough. CCR, 1441-7, p. 380. On 1 Dec. 1435, before the close of the parliamentary session, Peckham was named on a commission of array in Kent and the following month he carried out his final duty as a knight of the shire by overseeing the distribution of the rebate of the fifteenth and tenth the Commons had granted.

In May 1441 Peckham’s uncle William Uvedale received a royal licence to enfeoff him and others including William Burys*, one of Archbishop Chichele’s most important Kentish servants, in a large tavern called The Saracen’s Head in the parish of St. Gregory by St. Paul’s, London. CPR, 1436-41, p. 541. Also in the early 1440s he worked alongside the Sussex lawyer Richard Wakehurst† and Thomas Carpenter*, the bailiff of Hastings, in finally completing arrangements for the foundation of a chantry chapel in fulfillment of the will of John Salerne†, who had died long before, in 1410. CPR, 1441-6, p. 197. Salerne’s daughter and heir had married as his second wife the royal servant William Catton† (d.1431), and Peckham was entrusted by the latter’s widow (his third wife) with property in Surrey and 100 marks in gold as a dowry for their daughter Elizabeth Catton. Yet his co-feoffee Thomas Draper alleged that when the time came for Elizabeth to marry William Swan in May 1445 Peckham refused to hand over the money, causing him to forfeit a bond for 200 marks for the payment of the dowry. The recognizance for £42 which Peckham made to Draper in February 1447 was undoubtedly related to the settling of this dispute. C1/16/192; CCR, 1441-7, p. 458. Catton’s daughters by his third and last wife, Joan Wintershall, are not mentioned in The Commons 1386-1421, ii. 504-5. By then Peckham was no longer a j.p., for when a new commission of the peace had been issued in July 1444 he was omitted from it.

This may well be connected with the decline of Peckham’s putative patron the duke of Gloucester. The duke’s death in 1447 left him vulnerable to the hostile intentions of his most important neighbour, James Fiennes*, then created Lord Saye and Sele. The small estate near Sevenoaks called ‘Joces’, which Peckham had acquired in 1431, was coveted by Fiennes, who wished to incorporate it within his manor of Knole, and in June 1447 Peckham sold it to him. The surviving deeds reveal nothing unusual about the sale, Cat. Lambeth Chs. ed. Owen, nos. 72, 139, 154, 170. but later (after Fiennes had been killed by Cade’s rebels) it was alleged that the latter had used intimidation to obtain the property. On 14 Sept. 1450, before the commissioners appointed to inquire into extortions and oppressions in Kent in the wake of the rebellion, a jury presented that in 1448 Fiennes, his wife and Stephen Slegge* had made ‘such threats of death and imprisonment, drawing and hanging’ that Peckham had been forced to offer him further landed holdings in the parish of Seal, purportedly in exchange for other property. While he had duly carried out his side of the bargain, Fiennes had failed to make a settlement or an enfeoffment in return. Nevertheless, the widows of Lord Saye and Slegge were exonerated from penalty. R. Virgoe, ‘Ancient Indictments in K.B.’, in Med. Kentish Soc. (Kent Rec. Ser. xviii), 226.

It is unclear when Peckham died. He was distrained (for the third time) for failing to take up knighthood in the summer of 1457 and in Trinity term the following year he was called into the King’s bench to answer charges that, along with William Isle* and Thomas Ballard, as the feoffees of Sir Richard Frogenhale of Teynham, he had deprived the King of his right to an eighth part of the Kentish manor of Luddenham which had been held in chief. In 1459 all the accused were tried and acquitted of the offence. E159/233, recorda, Trin. rot. 27; KB27/790, rex rot. 8; 791, rex rot. 9; 792, rex rot. 30d. This is the last certain reference to Reynold. It looks as if his eldest son, James, succeeded to the family estates by November 1462 when he received an annuity from Edward IV. James, who became an important member of the royal affinity in Kent, served as a knight of the shire in the Parliament of 1467-8. CPR, 1461-7, pp. 230, 301, 566. Another putative son, Peter, was described as ‘gentleman’ in April 1460 when he acted as surety for a grant of a tenement in London: CFR, xix. 266.